


Midwinter.

by TaraethysHolmes



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Christmas, Christmas Truce of 1914, Gen, Protective John, War, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 20:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14089470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraethysHolmes/pseuds/TaraethysHolmes
Summary: "And because this is hope in the darkness, because this is Christmas and Christmas is birth and new life and damned hope, I tear a piece from the admittedly greying undershirt I wear, tie it to the dusty black barrel of my rifle, and raise it over my head."Christmas, 1914. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing to have ever happened during any war, in the history of the world. Everyone just stopped, and breathed in a sigh of relief, and sung together the praises of new life and hope.John Watson stands in a trench in the dead of midwinter, in the darkness between bullets, and listens to the song.





	Midwinter.

_In the history of the world, before 1914, a war on this scale had never been experienced. It was a war that woke everyone up; forced all members of the human race to open their eyes to those around them - and certainly not for the right reasons. Instead of offering the hands of friendship, the suspicions of war were offered instead._

_It was a harsh reality to have to face._

_The first year of the war was brutal, as all parties involved tried to come to terms with the idea that they were facing something they had never, not truly, faced before._

_And yet._

_Christmas Day, 1914._

_Christmas, I believe, is a universal thing. It wasn’t always called that. It was called Midwinter Feast, or the pagan festival of Saturnalia. But no matter what, no matter how far out the human race travels in the future, there will always be that time when everyone stops, and collectively lets out a sigh. Because Christmas means new life, and it means old life. It means that winter is halfway done, somewhere, someone is halfway out of the darkness._

_So on Christmas Day, in 1914, just for a moment, people stopped. All along the northern French front, from Calais to Strassburg, white flags were raised, and together, the troops sung, hoping, despite the most awful feeling that the world was crashing down around them, despite the most bleak conditions possible, that they were halfway out of the darkness._

_***_

_25th December, 1914 - Armentières_

We can all hear the pocking of bullets on the sandbags, rending the night apart with their screams. We’re all used to it now. The sounds are so familiar to all of us. 

I always ignore it. 

This close to the front line, where the damn Germans are firing their bullets with barely a heartbeat between each shot, everyone is used to it. Dark and cold, the men all huddle down in the tiny corners of dirt that they’ve each managed to sequester themselves in. Each of them is shivering, I can hear it. I can almost hear the sounds of their teeth, chattering together, mimicking the pattering of bullets on the sandbags just inches from their heads. 

I can count the numbers by the ghosts of white in the air, the plumes of mist emanating from each man’s mouth. 

The trench goes around a bend, tight against wooden slates and more sandbags. Packed into the corner, a sheep at the edge of a fence, is a young boy, his eyes frightened, and astonishingly blue in the darkness. Curls of black hair fall about his face, as he looks up at me, a fearful shudder in his shoulders. 

I spare him a smile. 

They are hard to come by these days, but we will make do. 

Resting a hand on his shoulder, I kneel down next to him. 

I think he would be crying, if he could. I think that the revolver he has on his waist is too big for him, that if he tries to stand up it will be as if he has an anvil tied to his waist, and he will collapse under the weight. It is a hefty thing, polished nearly to a shine, clearly a family item. That is what tells me that this boy has been at the front lines perhaps a week. Perhaps more. Likely less. 

‘Son,’ I say, forcing my voice to be steady, forcing myself to provide a sort of comfort to this young man. He reminds me of my own son, for a moment. ‘Are you faring well?’ 

He replies with nothing more than a tight smile. 

A sudden hail of bullets rain down nearby, perhaps a yard away. Perhaps less. 

Under my hand, the boy jumps, starting, and nearly leaps to his feet in shock. His curls bounce, and his blue eyes are far, far too wide in the darkness. They are almost puppyish, staring back at me as if I hold the answers to the universe. 

‘Listen to me, boy,’ I tell him, more sternly now, ‘be careful. You put your head above those bags, and you’ll be dead before you can knock two bullets together.’ 

Frightened, he nods at me, his head shaking violently as if the more he nods, the greater the chances he has at survival. I do not want to correct him. 

To stop his ministrations, I place both hands on his shoulders, as if he is my son and I am his father, and I am teaching him to be a man of the world. ‘Enough, son.’ 

Immediately, he stops, eager to obey. 

I take another breath, then blow it out carefully through my mouth. The breath immediately freezes in the air, cold as it passes through my lips. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine that it is a sweet, cool treat in the hottest of summers. 

He copies me, our breaths mingling in the air, mixing, indistinguishable from one another. 

‘There, son,’ gruffly, I say, releasing his shoulders. 

His face fills with a sort of wordless gratitude that doesn’t need to be spoken. He is barely a week on the trenches, and yet he has already picked up on these unwritten languages amongst us all, those of us who refuse to acknowledge anything outside traditional complaints about the weather and the war and politics at home. 

Another lot of bullets hails down, and involuntarily, the boy lets out a whimper. It is one thing to listen to a voice of authority, it is yet another to be accepting of that which surrounds one. 

Amongst the bullets, off in the distance, I can hear the sound of a bell ringing. As clear as a summer’s morning in the south of England, I can hear it tolling out a welcome, and I want to grasp it with both hands. 

Instead, I tug the boy to his feet, hunching low in demonstration. 

He is tall and slim in stature, and seems almost like a crane. He hunches low, bent double next to me. 

My feet squelch in my boots, as we both trudge past the front trenches, towards the warmth and relative safety of those further away. Behind us, others yet are following in our footsteps, as if I am Moses leading the Jews to safety. Perhaps I will part a Red Sea. 

The trenches are dark. They are nearly always dark, even during the day. A shadow is cast by the overhangs, by the high walls which keep us safe, keep us trapped down here as devils in the darkness. Around a bend I lead the men, as those who are now on duty by the tolling of a bell pass us in the opposite direction. 

There is certainly a palpable difference in the air - one can smell it. Those leading towards the front are possessive of hunched shoulders, the weight of the armaments on their backs curling their spines. Those leading away from the front are slightly more upright, but some are bloodstained, some are returning on stretchers, and some are not returning at all. 

It is a horrible thing to contemplate; dying. It never seems quite real until you are here, breathing in the air around us, and smelling the constant scent of death on the air. 

Certainly for the boy next to me, it will not have sunk in yet. He will not understand yet that he is more likely to die than he is to survive - that he is more likely to see the end of his life down the barrel of a gun than in his deathbed with his loved ones by his side. 

There is a new scent, though. The striking scent of coffee, roasting over a campfire. The smoke bleeds through the air towards us, before I can even see the familiar, flickering orange light. The low sounds of British voices hum through the darkness, mindless babble that has no real meaning. 

It draws us - me - in. Towards those voice I tread, slowly, as if I come upon it too suddenly it will disappear like dewdrops in the sunlight. But when I step into the orange-bathed warmth gathered around the campfire, it becomes real. 

Far across the other side of the campfire, Private Thomas raises his flask to me, grinning a gap-toothed grin. Next to him, several of the others also send me smiles, before continuing with their conversations. I let the sound of their conversation wash over me. 

‘Capt'n Watson!’ Sergeant Jonathan’s voice hails me, and I cast a glance over to see him waving, and patting the spot next to him. I nod in response, instinctively walking over to join him, toss myself down onto the hard ground and curl my feet underneath me. ‘Who’s 'im?’ 

I realise that he is talking about the young recruit squatting awkwardly like some long-limbed frog. I raise an eyebrow. ‘You have a working set of lungs, Sergeant, I’m certain you can ask the Private yourself.’ 

The Sergeant lets out a low chuckle, before turning to the Private in question, raising a brow. 

‘Private Holmes, sir… I mean Sergeant…’ The boy stumbles over his words, yet I am surprised by the deep tone of his voice. His accent is posh, slightly northern. Accepting as ever, Sergeant Jonathan just grins, and passes the both of us a small sip from the communal vat of coffee. 

The bitter, warm tang is nothing luxurious, not even particularly warm, but it is something, and something is better than nothing. 

Next to me, the young Private wrinkles his nose in disgust after taking a sip, and I find a low, gruff laugh is pushed from my belly. ‘Not what you are accustomed to, posh boy?’ 

‘No… sir.’ 

‘Ah well,’ I reply, ‘you’ll get there in time.’ 

‘You ‘ave anyone waitin’ for you back ‘ome?’ asks the Sergeant to my right. ‘Pretty lady, maybe?’

I nudge him, revelling in this feeling of camaraderie. This will have to do, for now. 

‘No one you’ll know about, Sergeant.’ He nudges me back, but ignores me after that, continuing his conversation with the man to his right. 

It leaves me to my silence, to my thoughts, just for a moment. I breathe in the scent of the campfire once more. It’s a simple scent, the iron-tang of heat, and a damp, smoky scent that would make my stomach rumble, had I not been used at this point to going hungry. It is almost as if the fire speaks to me, in the language of heat and sparks and crackles - flickering light behind my eyelids. 

The bell tolls again. 

It prompts me to my feet before I can think too long about it, tugging me once more to the _pock-pock-pocking_ of constant bullets hailing on tin. 

‘That’s me, then,’ I say, gruffly, shrugging my shoulders and working out a little of the tension - as if it won’t simply come rushing back after my first ten minutes hunched over in the lower trenches out front. 

There is no reply from around the campfire, only Private Holmes glancing up at me, nervousness in his eyes. I send him another reassuring grin - for this young man who seems so lacking in them. He returns with a grim, but firm nod. 

Stepping back towards the trenches is perhaps one of the hardest things I have ever done. And yet I do it, ignoring the squelching of my boots and the heat leeching from my old bones.

A passage from the light to the dark. I am almost certain there is a piece from the Bible about that. For if religion truly mattered here on a battlefield of man, I pray it would bring me courage; for my toes are cold and my face is frostbitten and here it seems like there is no God. 

But onwards I tread, hunching lower, my back already aching for the hours to come. They may be phantom aches, but they certainly feel real. 

Another deep breath, and I am there. The earlier bullet-rain has died down, pitting and explosion seemingly taking a breath of fresh air just as I do. It leaves me with just my thoughts, and the lightening sky to keep me company. I wonder, briefly, what time it is. 

Time seems such an odd concept, in these trenches below the pitted surface of the Earth - as if time does not exist, passing us by and leaving us in the dirt. The sky is lightening above my head, a covering of pale grey in the sky, the wispy, thick wads of cloud sitting heavy over our green helms. ‘ A sniffle overtakes me, just as another of my breaths mingles in the air. I rub a hand over my nose, hunching down front ways beside another shivering form clutching a rifle. My hands swipe together of their own accord, generating a tiny frisson of heat. 

Then, a note. The oddest humming begins at the very edges of my awareness, and I wonder for just a moment whether those in the trenches on the other side of humanity have found some new great weapon to blight upon us all. The humming is low, guttural, in tongues unfamiliar to my own, but it grows like a seed in the ground watered, flowing through the air until I recognise the notes - the familiar progression. 

_‘Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!_

_Alles schläft; einsam wacht_

_Nur das traute hoch heilige Paar._

_Holder Knab' im lockigen Haar,’_

‘Silent Night,’ breathes the shivering form next to me, excited in recognition. ‘That is Silent Night, sir! The Germans… they’re singing!’ 

I wonder why, but the answer is obvious. This is Christmas. It is Christmas, and the Germans are _singing._ They are singing something I know, something I have heard sung in chapels and churches and by children. They have children, they have jobs and schools and parishes and Christmases, and today, this day that would otherwise be spent celebrating new life, they are standing on the other side of the battlefield, and they are _singing._

And because this is hope in the darkness, because this is Christmas and Christmas is birth and new life and damned _hope_ , I tear a piece from the admittedly greying undershirt I wear, tie it to the dusty black barrel of my rifle, and raise it over my head. 

The wooden steps creak under my feet, as I raise my face to the light above the trenches, finally out of the shadows even for just a moment. I can breathe for the first time in what seems like an eternity, and I can turn my face to the sun. The cold morning air burns my lungs, makes my eyes water, and never have I felt more alive. 

And I echo the Germans’ song; 

_‘Silent night, holy night,_

_All is calm, all is bright,_

_Round yon’ virgin Mother and Child,_

_Holy infant so tender and mild,_

_Sleep in Heavenly Peace._

_Sleep in Heavenly Peace.’_

**Author's Note:**

> This was a little wordvomit that resulted from a late night at my computer and an English Literature test the next day, as well as re-watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special; Twice Upon a Time, with Mark Gatiss.   
> I just couldn't resist, to be honest.   
> It's Johnlock if you squint, but my Literature teacher didn't notice when I changed the names.


End file.
